FileOrganiser

A CLI tool to organise files into folders based on their creation date.

Installation

Script

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/henrik-dmg/FileOrganiser/main/Scripts/remote-install.sh | bash

I recommend to read the script before executing it. It will clone the repository into a temporary directory, compile it and then copy it to /usr/local/bin/file-organiser.

From Source

git clone https://github.com/henrik-dmg/FileOrganiser.git
cd FileOrganiser
swift build -c release
ln -s .build/release/file-organiser /usr/local/bin/file-organiser # or any other directory in your $PATH

Manual

• Download the executable for your system from the latest release
• Move it to /usr/local/bin/file-organiser or any other directory in your $PATH

Usage

The tool has two subcommands: copy and move. If you use copy, source files will remain in their original location. If you use move, source files will be moved to the target directory and the original folder structure will be lost. The options and arguments are the same for both.

Example:

file-organiser move ~/Some/Source/Directory ~/Some/Target/Directory --date-strategy year

Options

--file-pattern

An optional file name pattern. Only files matching this pattern will be moved or copied.

--date-strategy

The strategy with which files are grouped into subfolders. For the available options, please refer to the section Date Grouping Strategies.

--dry-run

Only print the actions that would be performed, but do not actually perform them

--verbose

Prints additional information during processing

--soft-fail

Keeps the tool running when a failure occurs for individual files

Date Grouping Strategies

Files are grouped by their creation date. The following strategies are available:

year

The most basic option. It will simply create one folder for every year. Example:

.
├── 2022
│   ├── file-from-2022
│   └── other-file-from-2022
├── 2023
│   ├── file-from-2023
│   └── other-file-from-2022
└── 2024
    ├── file-from-2024
    └── other-file-from-2024

month

Similar to year, but files will be moved into subfolders for each month as well. This is the default option. I use this option to organise my photos from my camera for example. Example:

.
├── 2022
│   ├── 04
│   │   ├── file-from-april-2022
│   └── 08
│       └── other-file-from-august-2022
├── 2023
│   └── 07
│       └── file-from-july-2023
└── 2024
    ├── 10
    │   └── file-from-october-2024
    └── 12
        └── other-file-from-december-2024

day

Similar to month, but files will be moved into subfolders for each day as well. I guess this one is not very useful unless you create a lot of files every day. Specifying day will result in the following folder structure:

.
├── 2022
│   ├── 04
│   │   └── 2024-04-01
|   │       └── file-from-april-01-2022
│   └── 08
│       └── 2024-08-29
│           └── file-from-august-29-2022
└── 2024
    ├── 10
    │   └── 2024-10-16
    │       └── file-from-october-16-2024
    └── 12
        └── 2024-12-31
            └── file-from-december-31-2024

Contributing

If you have any ideas for improvements, please feel free to open an issue or a pull request :)